I just wanted to inject some comments into this discussion. 1. No Martin I am not responsible for code in this case. I was involved in some discussions about it. 2. The change is NOT documented in the NEWS file! Ouch! 3. Karl, you call to 'revert to the XEmacs 20.4 system' which just worked. Well maybe it did for you but I suggest you read some of the XEmacs and linux help groups.. I helped over a dozen people in the last month alone to help getting their backspace to work. See 4. 4. You seem think XEmacs 20.4 did no translations. Well it did. It unconditionally translates '127' to 'delete', regardless of terminal try and/or terminal settings. This means you need to do a (puthash ?\^? keyboard-translate-table 'backspace) which works only most of the time and more importantly you cannot expect newbies to come up with this. What ever you might think about the new mapping at the very least it can be switched off. 5 .Pre XEmacs 20 versions even did this translation under X (i.e. trying to follow the "Backspace is just a new name for Delete" hardline unix guru approach. This causes lots of problems. 6. Apparently XEmacs 21.x with delete-key-deletes-forward t now does what the majority of its user expect of it on unconfigured - Solaris Console - Linux Console - Xfree86 XTerms which covers the overwhelming majority of cases where 'XEmacs -nw' is used nowadays. That's real progress not pseudo progress. And at least for the last 7 years it has caused problems for both new and old users (probably longer, but that is when I started using Emacs). Note that it is really keysym purity. In XEmacs 21.0 the-key-that-deletes-backwards is 'backspace' (used to be 'delete') the-key-that-can-delete-forwards is 'delete' (previously unavailable). This transition has been going as of XEmacs 20.3 and it is just that the tty code is now aware of the change. Yes this is incompatile but the people effected by this change are a now a small minority and moreover they are also the people that can be expect to know how to change defaults (thats why it is VERY bad that it is not in NEWS). Jan